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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
We agree that having a shared language and ethnic background makes it more likely that people will conceive of themselves as a community. But what I'm saying is that this is not necessary or sufficient.

But why do they go to such drastic ends to form such communities. And why do they want their brethern over the border to be part of such communities?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop After its time in the Twelve-Year Reich, Austria went back to being a separate country from Germany.

Austria was conquered and forcibly separated. Its separation was done at gun point.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
As we've said, Switzerland has been a nation for a long, long time with four languages. To some extent, the reasons will be specific to each country.

It is the exception not the rule. And Europe a very small exception. For every Swizerland there are ten Portugals.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop When borders change, sometimes it has to do with deals made between governments, but sometimes it reflects facts on the ground. Or both.

But every time the borders change they reflect ethnolinquistic lines more and more.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop I don't disagree that there are good reasons for political borders to mirror the distribution of ethnic groups and languages, but it's not inevitable.

It seemed that way in Europe. Over the years the map kept changing and time it changed it reflected ethnolinguistic borders more an more.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Nations arose in Europe. Where people see themselves as belonging to a national community, it's hard for other kinds of states to persist.

But why did this happen in Europe and not elsewhere?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop In Asia and Africa, other conceptions of states persist. Maps of nations show borders. Maps of traditional Asian governments (e.g., Siam) show the hubs of power -- central and regional governments.

Political boundaries in much of the rest of the world reflect decisions made in Europe. Particularly in Africa, colonial boundaries did a poor job of fitting how people in those areas saw things. Not surprisingly, a lot of nations in Africa don't function particularly well.

As you say the lines of Africa, the Middle East and SouthEast Asia were drawn by colonial empire. Making them unnatural in my mind. In Subsaharan Africa, the ethnic nations (the tribes) are so small that becoming a nation is not really practical. But still, the tribes in each country fight with eachother. But in the Middle East and Central Asia the ethnic groups are much bigger, but where the colonial lines are drawn, the lines are not natural and will move towards the natual borders, ethnolinquistic borders.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop It's not just that borders shifted to mirror languages and ethnic groups. People change, too. I said above that elites in many countries started speaking the vernacular. With the development of various communications technologies, you have new reasons for people in a country to speak the same language. (Analogously, think of the way regional variations in American English have disappeared with the spread of TV.) So with industrialization, minor languages tend to die out.

Yes - I acknowledged this. Al this it true. But as I said, it only explains why languages congealed with in borders. It does not explain why borders were moved to reflect ethnolinguistic boundaries.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop And then there are population movements. E.g., ethnic Germans all over Eastern Europe headed for Germany after WWII. People move constantly.

OK. Massive ethnic movements only happened after WWII. And these were mainly people were moved by Stalin. He moved them because he understood what I have been saying all a long. You can draw borders however you want but if they are not drawn along ethnolinguistic lines they are not stable borders. Stalin could have left the Germans in Pomerani and Silesia, and drawn the Polish border around them, but he realized that would create an unstable country. Pomerania and Silesia would push to rejoin Germany and leave Poland after the occupation was over. So Stalin ethnically cleansed those two areas and pushed all the Germans into what is present day Germany. 2.5 million people were forced at gun point to leae their homes and move hundred of miles into Germany. He did the same thing with Konigsberg (East Prussia). He knew if he left the Germans there they would want to rejoing Germany so he expelled them and pushed them into Germany. He replaced the Germans with ethnic Russians. What is ironic is that Kongisberg (now kalingrad) has put out feelers about rejoining Germany, but Germany does not want them because they are not ethnic Germans (if they were German you can bet your bottom dollar that they would want them back). He realized in order to move political boundaries and to make them stable, he had to move ethnolinguistic boundaries. He did the same thing with the Germans in Sudentenland. He moved all them all out of what became Czecholosovakia because he knew if he let them stay they would try and rejoin Germany again. At the end of the war, Austria was occupied. Part of the treaty that allowed the occupation of Austia to end was a promise that Austria would never rejoin Germany. The Allies were very worried Austria would want to rejoin Germany so they made sure it would never happen.